


A Worse and Better World

by GretchenSinister



Series: My Top 3 Pitchmas Fics [2]
Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Delusions, Doctor/Patient, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:29:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22706974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretchenSinister/pseuds/GretchenSinister
Summary: Original Prompt (please read my description of what I did with it before dismissing): "North is a psychiatrist who has just gotten a new job in the new town he’d just moved into. Each of his new patients think that they are some kind of childhood fantasy.Tooth Fairy - Was a dentist who had an obsession with teeth that led her to sneak into families homes, drug their children and steal their teeth and leave them little coins.Sandman - A man who was an elementary school counselor who created a drug resembling ‘Sandman’ dust that he gave to children from abusive families to let them sleep and have good dreams forever.Jack Frost - A young man who had suffered severe hypothermia when a group of his peers pushed him onto a frozen over lake and fallen through...[cut for length]"Okay. Thiiiiis prompt. What I used about it was North as psychologist, Pitch as patient. Sandy is another doctor, while the others don’t appear because generally I try to keep these things short. Pitch has been admitted to a psychiatric hospital as a suicide risk relating to persistent delusions he has. North’s opinion of what needs to be cured about Pitch changes over the story, and I hope you think it ends happily.
Relationships: Nicholas St. North/Pitch Black
Series: My Top 3 Pitchmas Fics [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1627792
Kudos: 7
Collections: Pitchmas Short Fics





	A Worse and Better World

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr on 2/19/2014.
> 
> Here's the rest of the prompt: "After he had recovered he had taken all the people who had hurt him and tied them up outside to freeze to death.
> 
> Easter Bunny - Really cant think of anything for him O_o
> 
> Boogeyman - A man who was abused and locked in dark rooms for long periods of time as a child. Loved to see people scared so he would find out what people around him were most afraid of and force them to face the fear until they succumb to insanity or suicide to get away from it all.
> 
> North has his work cut out for him, and things are only made worse when he finds himself more interested in his darkest patient than he should be.
> 
> These are only ideas of why they are in the asylum and DO NOT need to be used! I’d adore to see what someone else can come up with!
> 
> would really prefer this to be North/Pitch but I can totally deal with Jack/Pitch. Pitch needs to be the bottom though and if Jacks the Fillers choice I’d like it if he were the psychiatrist then! THANK YOU FOR TAKING THE TIME TO READ THIS ANNOYINGLY LONG PROMPT! XD

There are certain things about Pitch that don’t surprise North when he meets him for the first time: the fact that he wears no belt, that he wears shoes with no laces, that he has a day’s worth of stubble on his face, that he’s got the look of someone who’s a lot thinner than he used to be.  
  
There are certain things about Pitch that do surprise North when he meets him for the first time: the fact that North still notices him as handsome despite his neglected appearance and the circumstances under which they meet, and that Pitch stands—when he stands still—straight and tall, with chin raised imperiously, as if he’s royalty receiving a guest, not a patient staying in a tiny private room in a secure psychiatric hospital.  
  
“Hello, Pitch,” North says. “How are you doing today?” In the file, the note had been that Pitch was the only name he answered to. He treated mentions of his official name as if they referred to a separate person.   
  
“I don’t like the lights,” Pitch answers, waving an arm at the fluorescents overhead. “They’re far too bright. Doesn’t anybody realize that I’d be too weak to escape even if there were shadows?”  
  
Shadows? There hadn’t been anything about that in the file. But then again, Pitch had only been admitted two days ago and he hadn’t seen any doctors that he would be seeing regularly until now, with North.   
  
North thinks back quickly through the file. Pitch had been admitted following a 911 call in which he claimed to have killed his wife and daughter. In actuality, both wife and daughter had died six months ago in a car accident, an incident for which Pitch could have had nothing to do with, since he was waiting for them to come pick him up at the airport at the time for a period of medical leave from the army. Due to his behavior at the scene when the police and ambulance arrived, he had been taken in as a high suicide risk.  
  
The initial observation indicated delusions, but did not describe them in detail.  
  
North glances at the window. It’s fairly sunny today, and the room won’t be too dark without the artificial lights, so he flips the switch. “Better? We are not worried about you escaping, you know. We are worried about you hurting yourself.”  
  
With the lights off, Pitch relaxes slightly and walks with quick, nervous strides to the dimmest corner of the room. “I don’t believe you. You know I’d never hurt myself. I hurt Kozmotis, of course, but that’s in the past now. I’ve got him locked up, right in here.” He taps the center of his chest and the sides of his head. “Though he’s still fighting to get out. I’m weaker now than I was, and so he was able to regain control of me for a little while recently. That’s how you knew how to capture me.” He frowns. “You say you’re worried about me hurting myself, but I know that’s not true. You’re worried about hurting Kozmotis. You’d cut him out of me if you could. At least you didn’t bring your swords to try. Guess you’ve managed to become a wizard after all.”  
  
So he wasn’t really thinking of the person referred to by his name of record as _separate_ , really. North made a mental note of that before deciding to continue to engage Pitch on his own terms. It might be helpful in the course of treatment later on to hear what he had to say now. “It took many long years of study for me to reach the level I’ve attained,” he says. “And as you say, I brought no swords with me. Do you think I cannot reach Kozmotis another way?”  
  
Pitch shakes his head rapidly. “It’s impossible! But you’d try, wouldn’t you? Unless you knew why it’s impossible. Sit down. I have to tell you the whole thing; it’s too long ago for you to remember.”  
  
Nearly before North settles into the room’s small chair, Pitch launches into a story—a story of a war, and a general, and a strange enemy, and a universe of golden light. The telling takes the rest of the hour.  
  
And though maybe North shouldn’t let it, it takes every day’s hour for a week, and then another. Pitch is a masterful storyteller, practically making North’s hair stand on end with his recounting of his heroic (as Kozmotis) and diabolical (as Pitch) actions—the only problem is that he believes wholeheartedly in what he’s saying, in his sailing ship amidst the stars, despite the reality of sweatpants and cafeteria macaroni and fluorescent lights (which are always turned off for the stories).  
  
By the end of the second week North puts his notepad away with nothing in it but drawings. He knows he should have been taking notes on the delusion, to work out how to dismantle it. And yet…North sighs as he mixes up a batch of cookies at home, a hobby that previously worked very well to fight the stress from work. And yet, the world Pitch lived in now was both better and worse than the one they supposedly really shared, and that was appealing. The lows were lower, the highs were higher. There were no accidents, and all the enemies were obviously evil.  
  
The real problem, North thinks, was that Pitch thought of himself as one of those evil enemies, as someone at his lowest point. If he could free himself from that, let him live in that golden age! North could take care of him—  
  
North stops stirring and shakes his head. “Have to take better care of my own thoughts,” he mutters to himself in his native Russian.  
  
When Pitch adds a dashing bandit king studying to become a wizard into the next part of his story, North realizes that may be far, far more easily said than done.  
  
He confides his worries to the quiet Dr. Sanderson, admitting to him that Pitch could be discharged any day now, if he had someone to look after him—as well as the fact that he’d be willing to take on that role.  
  
“You know I can’t recommend that,” Sanderson says. “Are you asking me to be the one to perform the discharge evaluation?”  
  
“I don’t know,” North admits. “All I know is that this is problem.”  
  
Sanderson looks down into his cup of decaf. “North, I’ve never known you to do harm. But I can’t discharge Pitch to your home.”  
  
North nods. He couldn’t have expected anything else.  
  
“If Pitch became my patient instead of yours, though,” Sanderson begins, “I could perform my own assessment of the case. If everything is as you say, I’d be able to be sure of it in a week or so. Then I could get the discharge recommendation.” He frowns. “And I would ask him once, and only once, without you present, if he’d like to stay with you—after explaining all his other options. And if that’s the end of it…”  
  
“I promise will be the final end of it.”  
  


* * *

  
  
It takes longer than a week, but by Christmas, the Nightmare King’s in an incandescently-lit kitchen, wearing a black bathrobe and eating stars (-shaped cookies) as he used to.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments from Tumblr:
> 
> thewasandshouldbeking reblogged this from gretchensinister and added:  
> //I was really worried by the prompt, but this was frickin’ adorable!!
> 
> bowlingforgerbils said: This was nice. I like what you did with the prompt.
> 
> whentheoceanmetsky said: little typo at the end there hun. figured u wanna change bathroom->bathrobe?
> 
> tejoxys said: Aw, neat.


End file.
